That's the thing that amazes me about TV Networks. You've got a country full of people jumping up and down with fists full of cash, and yet, the US entertainment industry acts as if they are above needing their money and refuses to adapt with...quite frankly, the new generation that has grown up with the internet and instant gratification when it comes to entertainment.

"If the 4 million people who watched 'Game of Thrones' legally had been illegal downloaders - the show would be off the air and there would never have been a season 3," Bleich said.

Except that's not what happened, HBO is more popular than ever, and Game of Thrones is wildly profitable. So if you focus just on the metric of downloading, and ignore everything else about how business works, that attitude makes sense. However, if you look at every metric of what "profitable" and "successful" means, downloaders aren't stealing from you, they are people whose price point has not yet been met. There is zero demand from them at the current price point, and they only exist because your supply curve is fixed with legal constraints, but technology makes it easy to circumvent your supply curve.

GoT is the first show in awhile I've had to pirate. Almost everything else is up in iTunes, Play, or Amazon within 24 hours of its air date. Eventually I'll go back and buy the show off iTunes or perhaps physical DVDs, but I figure I'll let the digital media sales flag for a bit to voice my displeasure with HBO's model.

/also moving back into piracy for FX shows now that they embed ads at the beginning and end of them//if I'm paying you money to buy it, I expect it come ad free

That's the thing that amazes me about TV Networks. You've got a country full of people jumping up and down with fists full of cash, and yet, the US entertainment industry acts as if they are above needing their money and refuses to adapt with...quite frankly, the new generation that has grown up with the internet and instant gratification when it comes to entertainment.

Endive Wombat:That's the thing that amazes me about TV Networks. You've got a country full of people jumping up and down with fists full of cash, and yet, the US entertainment industry acts as if they are above needing their money and refuses to adapt with...quite frankly, the new generation that has grown up with the internet and instant gratification when it comes to entertainment.

Damn it, we've been doing business this way for the last 60 years, we are not going to change out business model now. We'll just hire a few congress people to put a stop to technological progress.

ha-ha-guy:GoT is the first show in awhile I've had to pirate. Almost everything else is up in iTunes, Play, or Amazon within 24 hours of its air date. Eventually I'll go back and buy the show off iTunes or perhaps physical DVDs, but I figure I'll let the digital media sales flag for a bit to voice my displeasure with HBO's model.

/also moving back into piracy for FX shows now that they embed ads at the beginning and end of them//if I'm paying you money to buy it, I expect it come ad free

bukijin:If there was a way of watching it without subscribing to fox cable or using an apple product then I would be very happy to pay for it.

But frankly GOT has bigger problems than illegal downloads...like how about finishing the books !! The TV series is just distracting the man from his writing. Back to work !

Honestly this season the people doing the writing for the show have started to prove they don't really need Martin to finish it up at this point. They've made a lot of good decisions in terms of cutting out some of the secondary characters and streamlining the plot. Odds are they can bring the series to a clean end even if Martin pulls a Robert Jordan. Martin gets the credit for the world building, but he's only nice to have at this point.

/plus supposedly HBO made him provide an outline for the rest of the series before agreeing to film it, so they have the major plot lines all sketched out

Teiritzamna:ha-ha-guy: GoT is the first show in awhile I've had to pirate. Almost everything else is up in iTunes, Play, or Amazon within 24 hours of its air date. Eventually I'll go back and buy the show off iTunes or perhaps physical DVDs, but I figure I'll let the digital media sales flag for a bit to voice my displeasure with HBO's model.

/also moving back into piracy for FX shows now that they embed ads at the beginning and end of them//if I'm paying you money to buy it, I expect it come ad free

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Now you're just playing the idiot. Most people with an IQ above a radish can read the implied context of "had to pirate due to lack of availability via digital distribution channels, unlike the vast majority of other current shows". If you can't, I feel sorry for you.

there really is no need to dl it with torrents if you can just stream it for free about an hour after the broadcast. Or you could do what i did and call up comcast and biatch about the rates and they may not only lower your rate but give you more channels and hbo for free. i called them and threatened to go to uverse. they knocked $25 a month off my bill gave me their upper tier package with hbo for free. if they are doing things like that they must actually feel threatened by uverse or people cutting off the cable in general. if they had not helped me out i would have done one or the other.

Good. That should put a stop to this "piracy" thing. Now we can focus on the real scourge: inviting your non-HBO-having friends over to your house for a viewing party. Your friends are criminals. Thieving, freeloading vultures, the lot of them.

Igor Jakovsky:there really is no need to dl it with torrents if you can just stream it for free about an hour after the broadcast. Or you could do what i did and call up comcast and biatch about the rates and they may not only lower your rate but give you more channels and hbo for free. i called them and threatened to go to uverse. they knocked $25 a month off my bill gave me their upper tier package with hbo for free. if they are doing things like that they must actually feel threatened by uverse or people cutting off the cable in general. if they had not helped me out i would have done one or the other.

You've got leverage because Comcast has competition in your area. Sadly, not every region has that advantage.

Igor Jakovsky:there really is no need to dl it with torrents if you can just stream it for free about an hour after the broadcast. Or you could do what i did and call up comcast and biatch about the rates and they may not only lower your rate but give you more channels and hbo for free. i called them and threatened to go to uverse. they knocked $25 a month off my bill gave me their upper tier package with hbo for free. if they are doing things like that they must actually feel threatened by uverse or people cutting off the cable in general. if they had not helped me out i would have done one or the other.

I biatched about my rates a while ago, and they kinda hinted they'd give me HBO but I was trying to bring my bill down, so I told them no. Kind of regret it, honestly. I probably gain anything in cash off by turning down HBO.

A friend just lets me borrow his HBOGO password, so I watch it the next day.

bukijin:But frankly GOT has bigger problems than illegal downloads...like how about finishing the books !! The TV series is just distracting the man from his writing. Back to work !

Tell the truth, considering the discombobulated mess that is the latter books, maybe this wouldn't be so bad. The TV writers could finish the story without fifty pages of food porn and five hundred new and irrelevant characters.

ha-ha-guy:Now you're just playing the idiot. Most people with an IQ above a radish can read the implied context of "had to pirate due to lack of availability via digital distribution channels, unlike the vast majority of other current shows". If you can't, I feel sorry for you.

Translation: i have decided that i want a thing but i do not like the price point/distribution model that it is offered for. Thus instead of doing without - which heaven forfend i could not possibly do for some reason - I shall obtain it without paying. I shall also indicate that this decision to obtain something that i wanted in an extra legal fashion was somehow someone else's fault. Because damn it i have a right to watch that show the way i want to - its in the constitution or somethin'.

ha-ha-guy:bukijin: If there was a way of watching it without subscribing to fox cable or using an apple product then I would be very happy to pay for it.

But frankly GOT has bigger problems than illegal downloads...like how about finishing the books !! The TV series is just distracting the man from his writing. Back to work !

Honestly this season the people doing the writing for the show have started to prove they don't really need Martin to finish it up at this point. They've made a lot of good decisions in terms of cutting out some of the secondary characters and streamlining the plot. Odds are they can bring the series to a clean end even if Martin pulls a Robert Jordan. Martin gets the credit for the world building, but he's only nice to have at this point.

/plus supposedly HBO made him provide an outline for the rest of the series before agreeing to film it, so they have the major plot lines all sketched out

That's so true actually. The TV series plot does run better and smoother than the books. The feeling I get is that he just started writing and let his characters wander where they would without a scheme to actually tie it all together and finish the book. And I estimate he has at least 3 more books to go - so what's that ? another 10-15 yrs ??

Teiritzamna:ha-ha-guy: Now you're just playing the idiot. Most people with an IQ above a radish can read the implied context of "had to pirate due to lack of availability via digital distribution channels, unlike the vast majority of other current shows". If you can't, I feel sorry for you.

Translation: i have decided that i want a thing but i do not like the price point/distribution model that it is offered for. Thus instead of doing without - which heaven forfend i could not possibly do for some reason - I shall obtain it without paying. I shall also indicate that this decision to obtain something that i wanted in an extra legal fashion was somehow someone else's fault. Because damn it i have a right to watch that show the way i want to - its in the constitution or somethin'.

I'm just the invisible hand of the market and you're a troll, such is life.

Brittabot:I refuse to pay close to $25 a month for a movie package just so I can watch one channel one hour a week.

That said, I'd be more than willing to pay per episode or per season if I could download the show the same night it plays on television.

Since I can't do that, my only other option is to use less than legal means to get the show.

/Canadian

No. I agree with everything you said, except that part. I really want to watch Game of Thrones, but I don't, for the reasons you've listed here. But I (and you) am not entitled to watch the show. I am unwilling to purchase the service at the prices they offer, so I do not. Pirating the show only sends the message that the DRM isn't "good enough".

Teiritzamna:ha-ha-guy: Now you're just playing the idiot. Most people with an IQ above a radish can read the implied context of "had to pirate due to lack of availability via digital distribution channels, unlike the vast majority of other current shows". If you can't, I feel sorry for you.

Translation: i have decided that i want a thing but i do not like the price point/distribution model that it is offered for. Thus instead of doing without - which heaven forfend i could not possibly do for some reason - I shall obtain it without paying. I shall also indicate that this decision to obtain something that i wanted in an extra legal fashion was somehow someone else's fault. Because damn it i have a right to watch that show the way i want to - its in the constitution or somethin'.

bukijin:That's so true actually. The TV series plot does run better and smoother than the books. The feeling I get is that he just started writing and let his characters wander where they would without a scheme to actually tie it all together and finish the book. And I estimate he has at least 3 more books to go - so what's that ? another 10-15 yrs ??

At his classic pace, definitely. I'm kind of figuring at this point, pride will push him to release the books ahead of each season and I'm sure HBO will encourage him to do so. Of course that might mean that crap gets rushed out the door, the most recent book wasn't that great, so I'm waiting to see if he can get things back together for the next one or not.

A concern for me is I haven't really enjoyed Martin's other works. He's not terrible, but I've read some of his other works while waiting for GoT books and I wasn't very impressed. I'm starting to worry that he mostly got lucky with GoT and he can't actually produce that caliber of work on demand, hence the big delays early in the series.

That dude's more worried about GoT piracy than HBO. Their biggest piracy concern is that people are putting up low quality versions that don't let people see the amazing production quality of the original material.

bukijin:If there was a way of watching it without subscribing to fox cable or using an apple product then I would be very happy to pay for it.

But frankly GOT has bigger problems than illegal downloads...like how about finishing the books !! The TV series is just distracting the man from his writing. Back to work !

I'm a big fan of the show so I was going to read the series. I wanted to make sure it was worth it so I checked it out a little. I hate to spoil everyone's fun but as the story moves along it becomes clear the author has created a mess with way to many storylines and characters with no sign of any decent conclusion. His books are getting very wordy, without movIng along the story, which is really bad considering The most recent GoT book had a more stories and characters than the bible. I hope he brings in another writer or even a team to help him salvage the work.

Viral advertising is the best kind of advertising and the more people who see it, legally or not, the better.

I've also heard claims that HBO is stuck with its godawful distribution model due to contracts with the cable companies and certain HBO executives being old and fearing change. Basically they're risk averse and like that Comcast just pays them a set amount of money every year. So some of the folk at HBO are welcoming the piracy because they can go make charts that say "If 70% of the pirates bought our shows at 3 dollars per episode, we'd all have gold plated yachts, so fark these deals with the cable companies!"